A miraculous deliverance from mortal danger.

A miraculous deliverance from mortal danger"

Olga Rozhneva. Conversation with Mother Emiliana (Hanson), Mother Superior of the Orthodox Monastery in honor of Saint Equal-to-the-Apostles Nina (America, Maryland).

Mother told me an amazing story:

“An event happened to me that showed me the obvious presence of the Providence of God in my life. It was an absolutely wonderful deliverance from mortal danger. I will tell you in order.

On July 17, 1981, I, a 25-year-old girl, came with my sister and her husband to a dance party at a 40-story hotel in Kansas City. It was a sweet party in the style of the 1940s. A lot of people gathered - about 1600 people. Young and old danced, around stood joyful smiling people with colorful balls in their hands ... Nice music ... And suddenly - a noise, a roar!

As I later learned, we were victims of a disaster: two hotel hanging galleries, designed with technical errors, could not bear the weight of the structures and people standing on them, collapsed. It killed 114 people and severely wounded 216. Until 2001, this was the deadliest destruction of a man-made object in US history. This terrible record was broken only in 2001 during the collapse of the South Tower of the World Trade Center in New York.

Many rescuers arrived at the hotel, who worked selflessly. The matter was complicated by the fact that they had to act with low visibility, among concrete dust. Pipes were also broken, people under the slabs were flooded with water, and even survivors could simply drown. Sometimes rescuers had to dismember the bodies of the dead in order to get the living. One man had to cut off his leg, crushed by a multi-ton plate to save him. 29 people were saved from the rubble.

A huge gallery fell on me and my sister. The concrete slab stood at an angle to the wall, and there was little room left - so we had a chance to survive. My sister was on my right, there was more space between the floor and concrete, and she could move a little. I could not. When I woke up, I realized that I was sitting on the floor with my head between my knees, heavily crushed by a concrete slab; the ribs were broken by my own knees.

I am a certified psychologist, Ph.D., and later it was interesting for me to analyze the state of a person in a critical situation. But then I was not up to the analysis. My mind was clearly divided into three parts.

The body and feelings screamed: I can’t move, I can’t breathe, I feel terrible pain. Only one hand could move slightly to the right and left.



The brain - part of my mind - was working hard at that time. A computer is a copy of the brain. The brain receives data from the senses, and its job is to comprehend these data. That’s all it can do. It starts with sensory data. My brain was completely shocked - it could not comprehend the data coming to it. It was puzzled, shocked. I remember these thoughts well: “Something happened ?! Something seems to have happened ... Has it happened now? Did it happen 20 minutes ago? ”

What I'm trying to tell you is very important! In the West, people worship with the brain, the mind and know nothing about the heart. They think that the most important thing is rational thoughts. Or emotions, feelings. But neither one nor the other can lead a human life. The brain is just like a computer. And at that moment when I was dying, it became very clear to me that my brain was not all of me, not my soul.

And the third part of my consciousness - my soul - all rushed to God. It was a prayer. Prayer is the cry of the soul to God without words in a deadly situation.

I am very grateful to this moment in my life, because at that moment I realized, I felt the composition of the human person. A very clear experience. I realized that the human person consists of three parts:

1. body and information from all senses,
2. the brain that comprehends this information; 
3. the heart, where the soul dwells, where the Holy Spirit dwells.

And the soul does not depend on the brain and on the body. She has a relationship with them, but does not depend on them. In the West, people have lost knowledge of the human heart. They say: “How can babies be baptized? Children do not understand anything! It’s necessary to wait until they grow up, they will develop a brain, they will grow wiser ... ”Those who say so, believe that you need to understand everything with your mind, with your brain, but this is wrong! And look what follows from this error. If you put the brain at the forefront, it means:

If your brains are smarter - you are the best person; 
If your brain is not developed, you are not a person; 
If you are a child in the womb and cannot yet think, you can be killed;
If you are old and do not think anything, you too can be killed, because you are no longer a person.

This is actually a terrible mistake - worshiping with the brain and misunderstanding what a human person is. In the West, they are also not able to understand how to worship the relics of saints. Their theology makes it impossible to understand how the whole person is filled with the Holy Spirit.

Everyone who was next to me was killed. My sister was in a safer place, she was able to get out. She pulled my hand, but, of course, could not help me. To free me, I had to break through a thick concrete slab with a jackhammer.

Then my consciousness, my soul, which was praying, was able to clothe my prayer cry in words. And I sobbed to my Guardian Angel: “Where are you ?! I thought you would always be with me! ”And this prayer was clearly not coming from my brain, not from my mind ...

And then I felt someone hold my hand tightly, but not from the side, as I tried to take my sister's hand. It was impossible, no one could take my hand in front, because there was a wall in front. Only concrete and iron. But they took my hand in front, and at the same moment I was freed from concrete captivity. I was lying on my back no longer under this slab weighing 70 tons, but on top, on the platform.

I felt like there was someone next to me. He supported my back with one hand, and stroked my face with the other and comforted me: "Everything will be fine with you." Strength and love came from him. I felt it very strongly. I felt that he was leading me and taking care of me. The pain in my body burned out everything except the presence of God and love.

My consciousness ceased to be divided into three parts - it again became a single whole. I decided that my rescuer miraculously freed the upper part of my body from under the slab, and asked him: “Can you pull my legs out too?” He answered: “They are free.” I looked down and saw my legs and even saw an open fracture of one of them. I began to pray the Jesus prayer. I remember what I thought: it’s okay if my rescuer hears the Jesus prayer.

My sister’s husband approached us. He was not injured by the fall of the gallery. When my sister got out, she sent her husband to me, and he tried to get close to me to pull me out - but this was impossible.

Rescuers came with a stretcher, and when they began to carefully transfer me to another stretcher, I experienced a terrible pain that nearly killed me. With a miraculous intervention, I did not feel the slightest pain any more. My rescuer then disappeared. My sister's husband was perplexed later: he saw him, but could not understand who he was, and could not even vaguely remember him. Here is such a wonderful rescuer.

There were many more wonderful miracles. In Kansas City, there were only two doctors who could have done surgery on my back - and the best of them was driving home after work, after the shift. He heard about the accident, turned around and drove back to the hospital.

Another miracle: in Kansas, there was a special center to assist during mass emergencies, and just two weeks before the disaster, they held exercises: how to behave during accidents and technological disasters.

The Orthodox parish from Boston sent a priest to me in the hospital to commune me or to pray for me if I die. A few years later in Greece, in a monastery, I met this priest, who partook of me in the hospital. He asked me: “Did that fireman come to visit you?” “Which fireman?” I asked.

It turned out that a firefighter who participated in the rescue operation came to the victims of the hospital. He ran into the hotel through a broken glass wall and tried to save the victims. He saw me and saw a man who tried to pull me out, but could not. It was my sister’s husband. The fireman knew that trying to pull out such a seriously wounded person, if she was so firmly crushed by a huge slab, was the worst thing imaginable. After all, you can severely damage the wounded and only aggravate there condition. And he stopped the unsuccessful attempt. My sister’s husband left me.

The fireman looked around, looked away from me for a moment. And when he looked at me again - I was no longer under the slab, but lying on the floor. There was nobody near me. One moment ago I was under a concrete slab - and the very next moment I was completely free.

And a fireman at a meeting in the hospital told all this to the priest. And he added: “I visit those people in the hospital whom I could help. But I don’t visit this girl whom you came to commune, because I did not help her. And I know what I saw. Sorry, I don’t go to church. But what I saw was a miracle. One moment - and she was on top of the platform. It just could not be! It was a miracle! ”

Doctors said that I suffered too much: broken ribs, damaged lungs, I was paralyzed. They said that if I survive, I will be completely disabled and will never be able to walk.

The doctor examined me daily, suggested moving my legs, moving at least one foot. They tried to send at least some impulse to my legs - but they did not feel anything and did not move.

Eight days later, I was able to take communion. Some time after the sacrament, a doctor came. She already in a usual tired voice, without much hope of success, began to offer me to move her legs - and in response, unexpectedly for myself, I raised my leg so high that the doctor gasped.

The medical council decided that perhaps a miracle would happen and I would get back on my feet in a year. But I already realized that the Lord brought me back to life. “God, even if He wants it, vanquishes the nature of order” - and three months later she left the hospital on her own feet.

After this miraculous salvation, I took monastic tonsure. "

In the photo: with Mother Superior Emiliana; Monastery of St. Nina; Collapse of the hanging galleries at the Hyatt Regency Hotel; Future Mother Superior Emiliana is taken out from the wreckage